Two paragraphs

Wherein for your pleasure


At the AV Club, during a review of Strange Days, a little Juliette Lewis nonappreciation:

“At the risk off being controversial, I am going to very humbly suggest that it may, in fact, have been a miscalculation to cast Juliette Lewis—a thespian who rivals Robin Williams for sheer, consistent annoyingosity—as the most the desirable woman in the world. Lewis and I go together like nails and chalkboard.Fiennes will do anything to relive his memories of life with Lewis. I, on the other hand, would happily pay a modest sum to purge every memory of Lewis and her goat-like bleating from my psyche. Heck, I’d pay fifty bucks just to forget that I ever saw The Other Sister or heard Lewis braying “You look good wita gun Bryyyyyuhhhn!” in the commercials for Kalifornia. If Lewis’ role were played by Jennifer Connelly or Angela Bassett—a stone-cold fox and a smart, uncompromising actress to boot—I’d find the film much less problematic, but this central miscasting goes a long way towards reconciling Strange Days to the purgatory-like nowhere land of interesting failures.

When Fiennes waxes rhapsodic about the seductive allure of Lewis’ voice, I found myself desperately hoping he was being bitterly ironic. It doesn’t help that with her emaciated figure and bright orange-red hair Lewis looks disconcertingly like Ronald McDonald’s crack-whore younger sister. It’s never a promising sign when a film’s ostensible sex symbol takes off her shirt over and over again and your default reaction is “No! God no! Hide your shame, devil woman!”.